Writers

Russell T Davies:
Russell T Davies is a writer who is most famous for writing Doctor Who. He started to get into writing by working on children's TV. He gets his inspiration for writing before he starts to write so he has a clear idea on what his writing will be about. To help Russell create his characters, he uses his instinct and his mind to combine ideas together before he writes about them. When he writes his dialogue, he thinks through better and better ideas to use, this is because he hates lazy writers, so the dialogue has to be the best it can be. With the scene action the he uses, Russell is very specific with his word choices and he only uses three words to describe each character in that scene. Finally he is always on stand by so he can write new ideas down.

Paul Abbot:
Paul Abbot is a writer who is famous for writing Shameless. He started writing short stories for papers and magazines and this is how Paul got into writing scripts. Paul likes to dive into his writing and see where it takes him. He designs his characters on three different people to make one character. This can be one real persons actions, another's looks, and another's personality to combine and make one character for his writing. When writing dialogue he gets ideas from other people. For example if he wants his character from Yorkshire to say something what a Yorkshire man/woman might say, he listens to the accents and the way they say things. When working on scene action Paul tries to keep it simple and obvious for the actor. Paul tries to make the first draft as detailed as possible which takes him a while, but then he can take bits off and trim it down for second and third drafts.

Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain:
Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain are writers who are famous for writing Peep Show. They both got into writing at university where they started writing together. They also did a little bit of work for the BBC, mainly for BBC 4. They try and keep their work to normal office hours (10am until 6pm). When it comes to characters, Armstrong and Bain always have an idea in mind on who they want to play their character even before they have started writing. This means that they can design their characters on the actors themselves, so this allows the process of filming to be easier because the actors will understand their characters better. Also they try to mess around with ideas before they put pen to paper so they can get a clear idea of what they want. When writing scene action they take the actors into consideration. Finally they do lots and lots of drafts to help them finalise their ideas.

Graham Lineham:
Graham Lineham is a writer that is famous for writing the IT Crowd. He started writing and sent his work into producers and they signed him up. Lineham may not write for days when he starts a new project as he likes to know how it will start and finish before he puts pen to paper. When creating a character Graham likes to make the character link to a family life or make a few characters act like they are one big family. When coming up with new ideas, he like to take his time and think things through before he goes ahead and make decisions. With scene action he wants to add some detail as he feels its vital to help out the actor, but tries to keep it as short as possible at the same time. When it comes to first drafts, Lineham always finds the first draft the hardest but every time he finishes it, he knows that the next draft will be easier.

Tony Jordan:
Tony Jordan is a writer that is famous for writing for Eastenders. He got the opportunity to write for Eastenders by writing a spec script and sending it to the BBC. Tony prefers to sit at his computer at certain times of the day because he feels that if he sits at his computer all day, he will get bored and his writing won't be as good. When creating new characters, he mixes and matches with people he has met in real life and tries to recreate their looks or personality into his writing. Tony Jordan likes to work out dialogue for his characters in his head. He does this by imagining the characters saying a line, if it sounds right then he will use it in his writing. With Tony's scene action, he likes to keep it short and simple as he doesn't want to over complicate things. Finally, Tony likes to try and keep his working hours similar to office hours, but often he can't keep to these targets he sets himself because he either works for too long writing or for less time.